INDIA: Flowers for the Empress

In his little wooden hut in Calcutta,
78-year-old Mohandas K. Gandhi last week drank a glass of sweetened
lime juice, thus ending a 73-hour fast (his first since 1943) in
protest against communal violence. Half an hour later a dozen Hindu and
Moslem youths came to beg Gandhi's forgiveness for rioting, solemnly
promised not to do it again. At his bare brown feet the penitents
placed big bundles containing knives, rifles, a much-used Sten gun and
a dozen U.S.-made hand grenades.

The old Mahatma magic had worked well in Calcutta. Just after 62 people
had been killed, 400 injured, in...